Description:

• Shrubs or trees, glabrous to stellately tomentose
• Leaves alternate, quite entire
• Flowers axillary, in cymose or fascicled inflorescences; upper cymes usually corymbose or panicled at apices of branches, or nearly all lateral at leafless nodes
• Calyx campanulate, 5-lobed, valvate
• Corolla salver-shaped; lobes 5, induplicate-valvate; tube elongate, cylindric or slightly dilated above, contracted at base around ovary
• Stamens included, arising near middle of corolla tube; filaments filiform, pilose, incrassate or with a small tooth near base; anthers short, cells parallel
• Disc inconspicuous or rather thick
• Ovary usually slightly stalked, 2-locular; style filiform; stigma dilated; ovules 3-6 in each locule, micropyle inferior
• Fruit a slightly fleshy berry, indehiscent, globose, ovoid or oblong
• Seeds few or by abortion solitary, oblong, nearly smooth; embryo straight or slightly curved; cotyledons either ovate or oblong and much broader than radicle, or semiterete and scarcely wider than it
• x = 8 (6) (aneuploids, B-chromosomes, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Cestrum L.
  • Linnaeus: 191 (1753)
  • Wright: 255 (1906)
  • Bailey & Bailey: 253 (1977)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 175, tropical America
• Southern Africa: Some cultivated and 2 or 3 naturalised
  • Toxic to stock